Aug 14 2011 at 12:54pm
Why does web design in higher ed suck?
In my last post I offered a critique of the (not-so) new University of Waterloo home page. The next question is, how do these things happen?
Before I get started, I’d like to be clear that the points offered up in this post are gross generalizations, and certainly wouldn’t apply to all universities. These are just some of the issues I experienced at Waterloo—there are others that I won’t go into. I’m sure people who work at UW or other universities can think of additional factors to add. These points are also referencing the home page, although most of the factors listed apply to the rest of the web space as well.
Those of you who are familiar with web design in higher ed have surely seen the infamous venn diagram cartoon from xkcd:
When this was originally posted I remember seeing some talk about “web managers” not understanding usability. At least in my experience (as a former university web manager), that’s not the case at all. There are several problems at the root of this: Read more…
